Using custom filters for Google Analytics metrics

Before you start

This article explain how to use custom filters for all Google Analytics widgets, except for the current visitor gauge and current visitor map. If you’re setting up one of these two widgets, please check this other article instead.

Syntax of custom filters

The syntax of custom filters is always the same:

name operator expression

Filter names

For Core Reporting API, the name always begin with ga:followed by thedimension or metric you want to filter by. Google has a great resource called the Dimensions & Metrics Explorer that lists and describes all of the dimensions and metrics available through the Core Reporting API.

Popular dimensions and metrics include:

campaign

year

keyword

city

pageTitle

language

transactions

userAgeBracket

date

medium

day

goalPreviousStep1

browser

timeOnPage

country

source

month

productBrand

pagePath

screenResolution

bounceRate

Filter operators

There are six filter operators for dimensions and six filter operators for metrics. The operators must be URL-encoded in order to be included in URL query strings.

Filter expressions

The expression states the values to be included in or excluded from the results.

There are a few important rules for filter expressions:

URL-reserved characters— Characters such as&must be url-encoded in the usual way.

Reserved characters— The semicolon and comma must be backslash escaped when they appear in an expression:

semicolon\;

comma\,

Regular Expressions— You can also use regular expressions in filter expressions using the=~and!~operators. Their syntax is similar to Perl regular expressions and have these additional rules:

Maximum length of 128 characters— Regular expressions longer than 128 characters result in a400 Bad Requeststatus code returned from the server.

Case sensitivity— Regular expression matching is case-insensitive.

Example of a custom filter statement

ga:source==twitter

Where ga:source is the name of the filter expressed as ga: and the specific dimension you want to filter by (in this case source), the operator is how you want the dimension to be compared (==means Equals), and finallytwitteris the expression that contains the value for the comparison.

When applied to a Google Analytics widget (such as Sessions), this custom filter will include only results where the source is Twitter (and results from any other source will be filtered out). In other words, only sessions that had Twitter as source.

More examples

Filter

Description

ga:keyword==geckoboard

Referring keyword is ‘geckoboard’

ga:pageTitle==Contact

Title of page is ‘Contact’ (exact match)

ga:pagePath=~contact

URL of page contains ‘contact’ anywhere

ga:country==United Kingdom

Visitor country is United Kingdom

Combining custom filters

Filters can be combined usingORandANDboolean logic to create a very specific set of data within a metric.

OR

TheORoperator is defined using a comma (,). It takes precedence over theANDoperator and may NOT be used to combine dimensions and metrics in the same expression.

Examples:(each must be URL encoded)

Country is either (United States OR Canada):ga:country==United%20States,ga:country==Canada